A Requiem for Matthew

And who by fire, who by water,
who in the sunshine, who in the night-time,
who by high ordeal, who by common trial,
who in your merry merry month of May,
who by very slow decay,
and who shall I say is calling?

And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate,
who in these realms of love, who by something blunt,
and who by avalanche, who by powder,
who for his greed, who for his hunger,
and who shall I say is calling?

And who by brave assent, who by accident,
who in solitude, who in this mirror,
who by his lady’s command, who by his own hand,
who in mortal chains, who in power,
and who shall I say is calling?
—Leonard Cohen


Mine is the last generation to come of age in a world that did not know AIDS. We were not quite hippies, but not quite whatever came next. We grew up with free love and casual sex. We weren’t as likely to judge our peers for their conquests as to congratulate them, or feel a pang of jealousy in the face of those grown-up pastimes in which they joyfully indulged, to which some of us could only aspire. But even as we ran heedless, headlong and helter-skelter toward the dangling carrot of a bright, promising future, the rag-tag specter of death, unbeknownst to our more youthful incarnations, was nipping at our callow heels.

I look back at those boys and girls, mirrored in the microcosm of upper-middle-class privilege, through the ambiguous lens of my boho upbringing (I was always more observer than participant), and my heart aches for the want of those simpler times. Even though there were cliques and clichés. Even though there were outcasts, myself included. Even though there were prices to be paid for getting caught in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person.

We’d been schooled that unprotected intercourse led to pregnancy or venereal disease; that choosing sex partners indiscriminately could end in tragedy. But it was the Boogeyman logic of Looking for Mr. Goodbar. You could be raped. You could be beaten. You could be kidnapped. You could be killed. It was the sociopaths you had to watch out for—not the occasional ill-suited lover or one-night-stand who seemed, for whatever reason, to have been a grand idea at the time.

While my heart aches, my head knows better. In the early ’80s, Patient 0, himself unaware of the repercussions, penned and posted those poison chain letters—HIV and AIDS—and, like any other tragedy that defines a generation, tolled a bell that cannot be un-ring.

Of course, we can ask the question: “What have we lost?” But there are so many answers; too many.

We have lost friends, lovers, sons, daughters, husbands and wives. We’ve lost untold talent, imaginations burning with genius, and a host of courageous souls. We have lost the wise and the foolish, the blameless and the guilty, the brave ones who dared stand in the spotlight, and those who let their quiet lives slip into oblivion swaddled in secrets, camouflaged by denial and desperation. We’ve lost innocence, and at times, even hope. We have lost resolve and replaced it with complacency. We have lost the freedom to act on our passions, if not without consequence, at least without fear.

And I have lost Matthew.

Much as I wish I could lay claim to having a mind like a steel trap, my memory is more akin to a sponge that once overfull, must be wrung out to make room for the next batch of information. I’ve forgotten many things, from the trivial and mundane to the urgent, and what seemed at the time, earth shattering. But I still remember the first time I laid eyes on Matthew. Some brilliance is like a laser that burns an indelible mark on a deep layer of consciousness; a stubborn tattoo that will not be erased. At least that is my hope.

Matthew was tall—6’7”, give or take; dark haired, with big brown eyes; a gangly, Semitic Ichabod Crane. An unlikely a sex symbol, but my attraction to him was immediate and magnetized. With the self-possession of youth, I approached him after the first session of our shared Dramatic Lit class and announced: “If you’re straight, I want to go out with you. If you’re gay, I want to be your friend.”

Matthew was as gay as he was tall, but as friends, we grew to love one another. Trust was built, layers were shed, and truths revealed. He was a young gay man in the late 1970s. He frequented bathhouses, nightclubs and meat market bars replete with backroom glory holes. Casual, anonymous hookups went with the territory, and Matthew was well-hung and eager to ride.

I was a wide-eyed, not-so-innocent innocent—long on sexual theory and short on practice. I’d had a lover or two, but my conquests were brief, and my appetites vague and unschooled. Matthew opened his world to me, and I, a stranger in a strange land, struggled to keep pace with his Gulliver-like strides. Once, after hearing the exploits of his previous night’s sexual adventures, I told him in my naiveté, that I was worried about him. His reaction was anger.

“You’re judging me,” he said.

“No,” I told him, “I just have this very strong feeling something bad is going to happen.”

“You’re judging me,” he repeated.

My inner Boogeyman had kicked in, but there was something else at work, as well. “What you’re doing is dangerous,” I persisted. In my mind, I pictured knives, blood, violence. I could see it, and I knew it for truth: Matthew broken, harmed, perhaps even dead; a smarmy headline on the evening news: “Looking for Mr. Gaybar.”

“There is nothing wrong with my lifestyle,” he countered.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” I told him.

“Isn’t it?” His tone was sharp, bitter and defiant. It came from a place of deep hurt and disappointment. It came from experience.

Back then, I struggled with the words. For Matthew, there was no separating who he was from what he did. Perhaps it was a distinction I could not stop myself from making. Perhaps I was judging, but I had a premonition. Matthew was in danger. It was as real to me as fact, even if it had yet to happen. Like Cassandra, my warnings fell on deaf, unwelcoming ears. I knew it wasn’t within my power to alter the future. All I could do was love him, hope for the best, and for the sake of our friendship, hold my tongue. And that’s what I did, although sadly, the Boogeyman had been right.

Ironically it wasn’t the violent predator I prophesied that eventually took Matthew’s life, along with so many others. No, this insidious serial killer was a string of malevolent letters, a sick alphabet that spelled out HIV, AIDS—of which, at the time, we had never heard, nor could possibly have imagined.

I will not elevate Matthew to a saintly pedestal, nor pretend that he was perfect. He could be petty and cruel, but he rarely turned that face to me, even at near the end, when he was riddled with sadness as intractable as his disease. He was a true friend, and I hope, in turn, that I was one to him.

“You never said, ‘I told you so,’ ” he joked in one of our last conversations.

“Nope,” I replied, my heart breaking.

“So, what are you waiting for? An engraved invitation? Go on.”

“Okay, I told you so, Schmuck. Satisfied?” I was smiling as I hung up the phone.

I close my eyes and I picture him: We’re at a dinner party. Lewis is there, as are Brian and Michael, and others whose faces I can picture, but names I can no longer recall. We’re all laughing. Matthew, my bright beacon, is recounting an incident from earlier in the day. He’s seated at the information booth in the Metropolitan Museum of Art—his summer job. “This frantic woman tourist rushes up to me. She’s gasping, out of breath. Face like a mackerel. Her eyes are practically bulging out of their sockets, and she yells, ‘The Renaissance? Where is the Renaissance?’” He pauses a beat, his timing impeccable, then nails the punch line: “So I told her, ‘It was in Italy, Honey—and you missed it.’”

Mine is the last generation to come of age in a world that did not know AIDS. We were not quite hippies, but not quite whatever came next. We grew up with free love and casual sex—and now, we are middle-aged. We were the generation who learned—whether the result of Boogeyman logic or not—to get tested regularly, and some of us still do. I yearn to see this killer brought to justice in my lifetime. I pray that resolve will yet overtake complacency, and I hope we can regain the freedom to act on our passions, if not without consequence, at least without fear.

On my nightstands sit a pair of green, ceramic art deco lamps, bequeathed to me by Matthew, a small portion of his light that yet shines. Youth is lost. Innocence is lost. History compounds tragedy with tragedy. I miss my youth. I am wistful for innocence, but I have lost Matthew, and out of everything that’s gone, it’s Matthew I miss the most.